Neşet Ertaş

Neşet Ertaş — Biography

Neşet Ertaş was born in 1938 in the village of Kırtıllar in the Çiçekdağı district of Kırşehir, the son of folk bard Muharrem Ertaş. Able to attend primary school for only two years, he took up the violin as a child before turning to the bağlama, absorbing his craft directly from his father within Central Anatolia's Turkmen-Abdal musical tradition. Beginning in the 1950s, his recordings preserved not only the songs and bozlaks he learned from his father but also a wider repertoire of Central Anatolian folk songs and dance tunes.

From the 1960s onward he began composing and performing his own poems, releasing them under the pen name "Garip." With his warm, distinctive voice, masterful bağlama technique and plainspoken lyrics, he first captivated Central Anatolia and then the whole of Turkey; by the 1970s his songs were being reinterpreted by many of the era's leading artists. The nickname "Bozkırın Tezenesi" (Plectrum of the Steppe), inscribed by the writer Yaşar Kemal in a book he gave him as a gift, eventually became the name most associated with him.

Regarded as the last great representative of the Turkmen/Abdal musical tradition, Ertaş was recognized in 2009 for inclusion in UNESCO's national inventory of Living Human Treasures. He died in İzmir on September 25, 2012, and continues to be honored through memorial concerts and cultural festivals held in his name, most notably in his native Kırşehir.